By the third day after the fissure widened, nothing emerged from it.
But things began to change around it.
The ash near the breach no longer blew east. Instead, it pooled. Like something underneath the ground had begun breathing—not hard, but steadily, pulling in the world's loose edges with each unseen inhale.
And just past dawn, one of the fire-root saplings began whispering.
It wasn't audible at first.
Kael had gone to check on the soil mixture in the forge garden—a tightly walled bed used for cultivating heat-sensitive plants—when he stopped walking entirely.
Riku found him standing beside the middle row of fire-root, eyes wide, his hand hovering just inches from the second stalk.
"It's humming," Kael said.
"Frequencies?" Riku asked, more reflex than surprise.
Kael shook his head. "Not electromagnetic. It's... subtle. Like a vibration under the fingernail. But when I touched it, it pulsed. Like a heartbeat."
Riku knelt beside the root. It looked the same—bright veins glowing, crimson tips curled toward the light—but its base had thickened. Almost gripped the soil.
He pressed two fingers gently to its stem.
A single pulse answered him.
Not random.
Not reaction.
Recognition.
Kael stepped back. "It's not just reacting to heat anymore. Or moisture. It knows you."
Later that day, Sira returned from the high ridge with two scouts—Ashen and Veit—both unusually silent. They had been assigned to map the cliffs above the fissure, track air currents, and watch for aerial migration.
They brought back roots.
Thin tendrils, pulled from cracks in the stone. Not fire-root. Not anything Kael had catalogued. Pale, almost translucent. Veined with black threadlines. Smelled like dust and iron.
"They weren't there two days ago," Sira said. "They're not growing out of the rock. They're growing through it."
Kael laid them on the analysis slab and ran a sequence of tests, all while muttering under his breath.
Riku didn't interrupt.
Eventually, Kael looked up, face pale.
"They're not native to this layer."
"Meaning?"
"They're too deep-rooted. Geological layers like this take centuries to split. Whatever they are, they grew upward from below."
Sira stared at the roots. "Then they're coming from where the Riftglass was found."
Riku nodded once. "They were always coming."
That night, as the forge quieted and the sky turned ember-black, Riku returned to the lower vault. The shard and the marked stone lay silent in their containment. But beside them, he placed one of the new roots.
Nothing happened.
No pulse. No light.
He stayed an hour. Still nothing.
But as he rose to leave, the shard shifted.
Not a movement. A re-alignment.
It turned a fraction of a degree.
Pointing—not at the root, not at the stone.
At the door.
Riku stared, unmoving, for several long seconds.
Then he stepped out into the corridor and sealed the vault behind him.
Outside, the wind had returned.
Soft. Gentle.
Carrying a smell not of fire, nor ash.
But of soil. Ancient. Deep.
That night, several of the tribe's warriors reported vivid dreams: walking corridors of smooth black stone lit by no flame; hearing voices they knew but couldn't name; standing before vast roots pulsing like lungs.
When Riku asked what the roots said, no one remembered clearly.
But each of them used the same word when trying to describe the feeling:
Welcome.
And that terrified him more than anything.
Because things that welcomed you… wanted something back.